RBI's Fifth Bi-monthly monetary policy review 2018-19

The Reserve Bank will be announcing the policy rate decision on Wednesday afternoon. The three day long meeting will conclude at around 2 pm today

This is the first meeting of the MPC after the apex bank had a public spat with the government.

Markets opened in red prior to the MPC meet: Sensex down by 229.59 points; Nifty by 74.10 points at 12:08 pm.

Many analysts predict that RBI will hold on to the rates as CPI inflation touched a 13 month low in November.

Post IL&FS fiasco markets are facing crunch in financial liquidity and RBI will have to find a solution for that.

GDP growth in the July-September quarter declined to 7.1% from 8.2% in Q1.

The Nikkei India Services Business Activity Index rose from 52.2 in October to 53.7 in November, signalling a solid upturn in output that was the strongest since July.

Analysts predict that RBI might revise GDP growth estimates from existing 7.4% to 7.2% for the current financial year.

Analysts suggest that rate cut is unlikely despite the fall in GDP growth as Federal Reserve has been constantly hiking the rates.

"If the Brent price remains at $60/bbl for the rest of FY19 (December 2018 to March 2019), we expect headline CPI inflation to remain manageable and average 3.9%YoY in FY19 undershooting RBI’s forecast," says Tanvee Gupta Jain, India Economist at UBS.

"Considering we expect growth momentum to slow further in 2H FY19, we believe this would also help lessen the pressure on refined core inflation (CPI ex food, fuel group, petrol and diesel) which remains elevated at 5.6% YoY as of October 2019," she adds.

Data released a few days ago showed the economy suffered an unexpectedly sharp slowdown in the July-September quarter, when annual growth slid to 7.1% from the two- year high of 8.2% posted in the previous quarter.

S&P BSE BANKEX down by 216.62 points ahead of the MPC decision.

The Reserve Bank is set to announce the policy decision in half an hour's time.

RBI keeps the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5%.

Growth in the index of industrial production (IIP) slowed down to 4.5% in September 2018. Capacity utilisation (CU), measured by the Reserve Bank’s Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey, increased from 73.8% in Q1 to 76.1% in Q2

Inflation is projected at 2.7-3.2 per cent in H2FY19; 3.8-4.2 per cent in H2 FY20: RBI.

Based on an overall assessment, GDP growth for 2018-19 has been projected at 7.4%(7.2%-7.3% in H2) as in the October policy, and for H1:2019-20 at 7.5%, with risks somewhat to the downside.